A DAY AT THE BEACH

During our drive to Arizona last month, we got to spend about 23 hours in Santa Monica, the city where Julie and I lived immediately after we got married. But for Nate and Will, it was their first time.

While the little guys had been to the beach once when they were not quite one year old, this was the first chance they had to walk along a beach on their own power.Will sat right down and started playing in the sand.And Nate sometimes didn't know exactly what he was supposed to be doing.But they both had fun, and they both had a chance to meet some of our friends from California. What they might not of understood is just how wistful their parents (especially their father) were during the short visit. We lived a very good life and Santa Monica, and the flood of familiar sights, sounds, and foods made me desperately homesick for the place.

And when we drove away the next day, it was with the hope that we would return, maybe to stay. But that will take a giant pile of money that we just don't have right now. But for one day, it was nice to feel at home again.

SPICE WORLD

I have neglected this space too long, but allow me to remedy that with a few more photos taken while in Istanbul. Yes, I know that was back in April, but there are still many good photos yet to be had.

This photo installment features our trip to the spice bazaar. Normally, I wouldn't care much about some ancient market selling spices. Quite frankly, I don't care about spices at all. But the spice bazaar also has pistachios. I really like pistachios and I lived in California for many years, and they've got great pistachios. Then I tried the nuts from Turkey. I will never be the same again. They are the best pistachios in the entire world. Overnight, I became very serious about pistachios. As a matter of fact, here's a picture of me standing outside the spice bazaar feeling very serious about pistachios.

Oh yeah, that's pretty serious.

So we go in the spice bazaar, me in search of the best pistachios on earth, Julie in search of... well... spices I guess.

And after a few minutes I must grudgingly admit the spice bazaar is pretty cool. The smells are wonderful and the colors, well...Most stores have their spices in colorful pyramids. They're just begging to have their photo taken.Twice.But perhaps the most heavily advertised product is a spice I've never heard of before: Turkish Viagra.Five times in the night? Good luck, indeed. So of course I have to buy some. But then I turn the corner and see...Aw man! Six times in the night? I've been ripped off!

Eventually we found the vendor that sold the specific type of pistachio that I deemed the best (and most vendors deemed the most expensive). They were worth every penny. Worth, perhaps, even more than ten times in the night... but that's hard to know for sure.

NOTES FROM THE BUS

It’s early Saturday morning and I stagger onto a bus with about 40 journalists, most of whom are hung over. I’m not hung over, but I certainly look and feel like it.

We’re going to tour New Orleans’s 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish. Both neighborhoods were devastated by floods following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I’m uneasy about the tour. I interviewed countless evacuees when I was working for a television station in Texarkana. Some of their stories haunt me to this day. Now I’m on vacation, and I’m concerned their misery is being used for my entertainment.

Perhaps I’m making too much of this. After all, I’m a journalist. We’ve got a license to rubberneck. We pull over at horrific traffic accidents and start taking pictures. We walk up to people who have just lost a loved one and ask, “How do you feel?” Why should this be any different? Well, technically, I’m off duty. So that’s different. I feel guilty, but not so guilty that it keeps me from getting on the bus… with a camera.

Our bus eases down Canal Street, and an oppressively cheery tour guide explains how high the water hit various buildings. There are spray paint markings on various buildings left by National Guard troops, but the neighborhoods seem only a little worse for the wear.
Then we hit the 9th Ward. It is mostly deserted. Thick stands of weeds conceal the concrete slabs where homes once stood. I’m later told this represents progress. Not too long ago, the area was dotted with debris piles larger than most houses. Those have been cleaned up, and in their place is nothing. Whole blocks have been completely cleared of homes. Others have one or two homes looking fresh and rebuilt, dropped into a sea of weeds.
St. Bernard Parish is in slightly better shape, but that’s not saying much. Small community stores are open, but the area’s big box retailers still stand derelict in the middle of giant, empty parking lots.We stop at a high school and the principal tells us harrowing stories about the days that followed the flooding. Later the directors of the St. Bernard Project tell us about the army of volunteers who have rebuilt more than 100 homes in the parish.

They all begin and end their remarks by thanking us for coming to their neighborhood to view the destruction and rebuilding process. They’re worried they’re being forgotten as newer natural disasters grab the popular attention.
Implicit in their welcome is the understanding that we will go out and tell the world what we’ve seen. But it’s hard to know just what to say. By all accounts, things are much better than they were even a few months ago. More than half the population has returned to New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. The work of the volunteers in these communities is substantial and helps restore my confidence in mankind.

But underneath it all is a lingering sense of despair and disbelief. Three years later, and this is all we could fix? Really? The country that brought you the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift can’t get homes rebuilt on its own home turf? The country that can find 340 million dollars per day to fight the Iraq War can’t find the money to get New Orleans back on its feet?

I know it’s not that simple. Between private property rights and insurance and multiple layers of government, the scene I see outside of the bus as we head back to the hotel is a product of thousands of small individual choices that somehow add up to something larger. I know this. But that’s still no excuse for what’s happening, or more accurately, what’s not happening.

So what to make of this? What to say about this scene before me? There’s likely nothing I can add that hasn’t been stated more eloquently by the people who live in New Orleans and lived through the storm and its aftermath.

But I’ve still got an implicit promise to keep to the people I’ve seen and heard: the promise that I would write about them in whatever forum I write for (in my case, this little ol’ blog).

So I’ll post a few admittedly weak photos taken from a moving bus and pass along the message I’ve heard time and again down here. It’s a simple yet somewhat contradictory message.

First, New Orleans is back, please come visit. Second, New Orleans is nowhere close to being rebuilt and the trauma and sorrow continues three years later. Third, please don’t forget us.

After what I’ve seen, I doubt I ever will.

MSY-ATL-SLC-MFR

Breakfast in the Central time zone. Lunch in the Eastern time zone. Dinner in the Mountain time zone. Now I'm back in the Pacific and very tired.

But with all that time on airplanes, I just about finished reading "The Geography of Bliss," which I heartily recommend.

Didn't have time to write about the 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish while in New Orleans. I'll have that up in the next few days. But for now, I'm going to sleep.

NOLA 1

After an inauspicious start to the day that included sleeping in past my alarm and muttering some obscenities, it has been a good day here in New Orleans.

Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke today, and I was struck by two things. The first was the overwhelming challenge of trying to rebuild a city that was completely shut down by the storm in 2005. While many people have returned, officials are still trying to persuade people displaced by the hurricane to return home. And they're trying to get businesses to come back, too. And crews are still rebuilding broken infrastructure like roads, power lines, and the sewer system. They're talking about decades until the city is made whole again.

But more striking was the anger conveyed by both Nagin and Landrieu. It has been almost three years since the city was flooded, yet officials still find themselves essentially begging for money from the feds. Both men said they felt like the city had been forgotten and disrespected by America.

I was taken by an expression Landrieu used just before ending his remarks. He said the city appreciated, but did not need any more "drive-by empathy" from Americans. Instead, they want solutions.

So I'm left to wonder if I am here engaging in "drive-by empathy." I've been joking that New Orleans is the ideal liberal guilt destination right now. You can come here and take a vacation, and no matter what excess you engage in, you can chalk it all up to "helping out a city that really needs it." Will our consciences be soothed if we all blow a lot of money in this city? I don't know. Every local I've spoken to has said how happy they are that people are returning to the city and holding conventions and spending money.

Tomorrow I'll have a chance for some drive by empathy of my own. We'll be taking a bus tour of the parts of the city that still haven't been rebuilt. I'll let you know how it goes.

AWAY AT LAST

Our plane touched down just before 10 tonight. Getting a taxi was easy enough and there was almost no traffic between the airport and downtown. And as I'm being driven into town, I'm taken back to my last trip to New Orleans in 2005. It was about 5 months before Katrina hit.

As we pass through the outlying communities, I think back to the aftermath of the hurricane. I was working in Texarkana and the city was full of evacuees from New Orleans. I didn't know where Metairie was the last time I came here. But now I can't stop thinking about the man from Metairie who fled to Texarkana and was working out of donated office until he was allowed to return home. Or the girl who lived in the Lower 9th Ward who got separated from her family and had to sleep on top of a freeway overpass and was eventually reunited with her parents in Texarkana. Or the man who stayed in the Superdome and simply said, "I'm alone" when I asked him how he's holding up.

I don't know where these people are now. Don't know if they've returned here. From the nighttime drive from the airport, it's hard to see anything different here. I'm staying in the French Quarter, and the area was spared the flooding that other neighborhoods saw.

But it stands to reason that the city is different. Will I be able to notice? I don't know.

MFR-SLC-MSY

In a few hours I will board a nasty regional jet and head out to New Orleans. I'll be attending a writer's conference there.

I find myself apprehensive as I prepare to leave. This whole endeavor is somewhat foreign to me.

I've never attended a conference in my life, but from what I can surmise, it's a gathering of people who do the same thing. They converge to share war stories, network, and get really, really drunk.

There are all kinds of problems with this scenario. First, I'm not really like the other people at this conference. They will be professional writes. I'm a television journalist.

Second, I'm not much of a networker. The whole act of networking feels sleazy and insincere to me. Every time I try, I feel like the other person is thinking, "this man is trying to use me... and I thought he was interested in me as a person!"

And most importantly: I don't drink. That's not to say I don't go to bars and socialize when my friends do. But there's something of a "brotherhood of drunkards" that I'm just not a member of.

So why am I going? Good question. I'm anxious to escape my comfort zone and experience new things and expand my social and professional network. So off I go. Off I go to New Orleans by myself. Off I go to the Big Easy as a prudish, teetotaling Mormon.

I'll let you know how it goes.

TURKEY RECAP: TRAFFIC TERROR

While in Istanbul, we didn't ever drive a car, and that's a good thing. But we spent a lot of our time inside motor vehicles other people were driving, be they taxis, buses, or Christina's Volvo.

I'm a person who loves a thrill ride. I've traveled all over to ride great roller coasters, and I even bungee jumped once. But Istanbul traffic? That's a bit too much.

I have seen things... things I can't even describe. But here are some of the things I have the language to describe.

I have seen people walking in between lanes on a busy freeway (they were trying to sell things).

I have seen buses literally brush back pedestrians with their side view mirrors.

I have seen a front-loader tractor pass a Volkswagen on a curve while going uphill.

Indeed, it is something of a minor miracle that the entire population doesn't die in car wrecks every day. As a novice, I wasn't prepared even to look at it through a windshield. I would try to carry on a normal conversation with Christina, and it would go a little something like this...

"So Nate and Will are almost talking, but not quite. They do this cute thing where they ON YOUR RIGHT, ON YOUR RIGHT!!! Oh, never mind. So anyway, they'll climb up on the couch and WE'RE IN ONCOMING TRAFFIC!!! THE CARS ARE COMING RIGHT TOWARDS US!!! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!!! PLEASE DON'T LET ME DIE HERE!!!!"

As it turns out, everything was ok. But I really did need to take blood pressure medication if I wanted to get inside a car.

And just staying off the roads wasn't a guarantee you wouldn't be confronted by cars.

I was honked at while walking down the sidewalk by a driver who decided the sidewalk was his road.

I saw another driver honk at a pedestrian who was crossing the trolley tracks... at the trolley station... but the driver was using the tracks as his own private road.

I was brushed back by a bus and several speeding cars as I walked down a pedestrian path in Istanbul's public park.

But after a while, I did become a slightly more aggressive pedestrian. While once I scurried across the street like a squirrel trying not to get squashed under the tires of a passing bus (or using an native as a human shield), on my last day I crossed the street with confidence and pride. When a bus turned left and got inches away from me and honked, I didn't even flinch. I just looked the driver with a steely cold look that said, "deal with it." That's how cool I was (or stupid, I can't remember which).

Attempts to document the truly insane traffic didn't materialize. When things were really hairy, I was more busy offering up last prayers to any god I could think of. But I was able to shoot a few 30 second videos of us driving around in a more quiet part of town. So this is nutty, but it's a country drive compared to what the rest of the city holds.

CALLS TO PRAYER

It's been too long since I've released any Turkey stuff, so lets see if we an remedy that. This is some video we shot in Istanbul. We were walking through a park when the afternoon call to prayer happened and I really wanted to capture the audio... (what I mean is that the video is nothing special, but the audio is cool... I would love to do some field recording in that park some day)

There are mosques everywhere in Istanbul, and when the call to prayer happens, the sound echoes off the buildings and hills for miles around. The audio in the video above was taken right near Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque. You can hear calls to prayer coming from both places in the video.

This struck me as somewhat curious, because Aya Sofya isn't a mosque. It started as a Christian church, but was turned into a mosque at one point. But when the modern state of Turkey was founded, Aya Sofya became a museum. At first I didn't think they did a call to prayer, but once a saw the sound system on their minarets, I realized that they did.

So what to they say during the call to prayer at a place where you don't really pray? Julie and I were on a boat with our friend Christina on the Golden Horn when the evening call to prayer happened. So I tried to explain what they might be saying right then at Aya Sofya. Julie turned on the camera as I started...

For the record, that night on the boat is one of the most beautiful nights I have ever seen in my life. I've got tons of pictures and I'll post them in the near future.

TURKEY RECAP: U.A.S.

What is a U.A.S., you ask? Why, it's the acronym all the cool kids use for "Ubiquitous Ataturk Statue." The UAS is, well, ubiquitous in Istanbul. I can be found in parks...

In government buildings...And most other public places.I'm told Ataturk is Turkey's George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson wrapped up into one. He created the modern Turkish state and kept the place from being carved up after World War I. So naturally, the man merits a statue that looks vaguely Soviet.(This picture was taken from a moving bus, so pardon the framing.)

Sometimes the UAS must be accompanied by another feature of Istanbul, the Ubiquitous Ataturk Picture...

Sometimes hey come with profound sayings...This one is from the Istanbul train station and I believe it says something like, "How joyful it is to be a Turk." (I'm sure Christina will correct me if I'm wrong.)

You'll notice that I'm not making a lot of pithy comments about the statue or much else in Turkey. You see, it's illegal to publicly denigrate Turkishness. A Nobel Prize winning Turkish author was arrested on an Article 301 charge a few years ago. So if this guy can't avoid prosecution, what chance do I have. But I have been looking for a way to get back to Turkey in the near future... perhaps this would be the way to go about it. Hmmmmm...

TURKEY RECAP: SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION

Politics in Turkey is a strange animal. It's a Muslim nation, with a secular democracy, that is routinely overthrown by the military. The current party in power nationally and in Istanbul is "AK" Party. I understand people pronounce the party's name "ack," I prefer to call it "A-K" because I think it would be really cool if they had a campaign song that went, "It was a good day today. You voted AK today."

I could go on about how AK is a slightly religious party and how the country may undergo a judicial coup by the end of the summer, but I doubt you're interested in that.

What's interesting about the current ruling party is the non-stop self promotion campaign they've launched. They've sent glossy mailers to citizens (they weigh about a pound) touting their accomplishments.

From what I can figure out, the party has taken credit for everything from the construction of new sports stadiums to the invention of bread.But the biggest feature of the self promotion campaign involves hundreds of billboards displayed all across town. So one sunny Saturday, Christina, Julie, and I decided to go find some.Unfortunately, most of the billboards are located on freeways, and that's not a good location to get out of the car and snap pictures (although some people in Turkey clearly wouldn't have any problems doing that... more on that subject in a week or so). But we did find a billboard near an easily accessible pedestrian area...But what does it say? For that, let's turn to the U.S. State Department's Media Liaison...

Sounds good to me.

TURKEY UPDATE: LAND OF GIANT-ASS FLAGS

Say what you will about the Turks, they have a cool looking flag, and they're not afraid to show it. During our stay in Istanbul, we were in town for National Sovereignty and Children's Day. Honestly, I don't quite know what the connection is between children and sovereignty. To be honest, I feel like Julie and I have lost a great deal of sovereignty since having children, but we were not consulted before Turkey began naming their holidays. We also weren't consulted before they created this vaguely Soviet looking poster advertising the April 23rd holiday.

And while National Sovereignty and Children's Day is meant to honor the opening of the Turkish National Assembly, it might be better called "Giant-Ass Flag Day." Because, when the Turks have a holiday, they get out some giant-ass flags.Some will spruce up the giant-ass display with an Ataturk picture.Indeed, even the television stations feature a waving Turkish flag during their programming on the holiday. Some also include an Ataturk photo. The fanciest one actually had Ataturk's image waving on a separate flag. Very impressive. Also impressive are the number of buildings they can put giant-ass flags on.But some take the art to a whole new level...This was the flag hanging from a mall close to where we were staying. And that's not even the biggest one. There were several 40 story buildings that had flags that easily covered 20 floors. Alas, I didn't have my camera around when we drove past those.

Even more impressive: on April 24th, all the flags were gone.

PHX-MFR

Home at last. Reality (read: work) resumes tomorrow. More trip updates in the days to come. Until then, I'm going to bed.

IST-LHR-LAX-PHX

4 airports
3 airlines
6 security checks
27 hours on an airplane or in airports
10 hour time change
1 massive case of let lag

...and we're not even home yet.

CRISPO AT THE BLUE MOSQUE

I promised Thomas I would show his chocolate some of the sites of Istanbul, so I did.

That piece of Norwegian chocolate has seen a lot of the world, and it's still got a trip across Europe and North America ahead of it.

And unfortunately that journey will start much too early tomorrow morning. We'll spend a very long day hopping from Istanbul to London to Los Angeles and then to Phoenix before we drag our tired butts to bed. I'm really anxious to see Nate and Will again, but I'm not really looking forward to leaving here. This is a great city, and I'd like to spend more time here.

I'd like to go on, but it's time to start packing. I'll write more on the plane tomorrow and post it when I can. There are also many more stories and photos to share from this trip, and I'll be doing that in the days and weeks to come.

But for now, it's "so long" from Istanbul, a city I hope to return to some day.

FUNNY BUSINESS

What with the language barrier and all, I have noticed some pretty funny business names In Istanbul. Take for instance this grocery store on the western side of town.

And this dubious sounding business...I don't even want to know what those guys are selling, but it sounds, well, very naughty.* Then there's the store that sells lingerie called...And once you have store called "boob" its just a matter of time before you find the store called...They sell silver. Nice stuff actually.

*I'm told by a Turkish speaker that"Koc" (I don't know how to make the little dangling thing at the end of the "c") is pronounced "coach" as in "motor coach." That makes a lot more sense now.

DERVISHES

When you tell people you're visiting Turkey, anyone who has been there will invariably say, "You must see the whirling dervishes." At which point I tell a joke about Maria Von Trapp and the whole conversation gets sidetracked.

(So here's the thing, in the Sound of Music tune "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria" some nun claims that Maria could "Throw a whirling dervish out of whirl." So it seems like the dervishes would not want Maria anywhere around. They probably post her picture up at the performance hall just to insure she doesn't make it in, because that woman simply can't be allowed to disrupt the performance that way. Too obscure?)

I'm sorry, where was I? Oh yes, the point is that we did go see the whirling dervishes, and they really are a sight to behold. The performance starts with a short concert.

Followed by the entrance of the dervishes in a room with very poor lighting.Then, after some walking and bowing, they start spinning...Their outfits are designed to symbolize the death of ego. The hats represent tombstones.And the white cloaks represent shrouds.They spin with one hand up and the other facing down, meaning "From God we receive,and to man we give: we keep nothing to ourselves."They spin four different times for about 8 minutes. Each spin cycle (I'm not trying to be funny with that, I really couldn't think of a better term) is designed to take the dervish from the cares of earthly life into a realm of non-existence where the dervish is one with God.It is beautiful and hypnotic and it is really easy to get carried away taking pictures of the performance. But after an hour, it's over. The dervishes bow once more.And then they leave. It's such a meditative experience, the audience seemed unsure whether to applaud when they left. Eventually we collectively decided that some applause was in order just as they were walking out the door.

The performance was one of the highlights of the trip so far, and if you're in Istanbul, well, you really must see the whirling dervishes. Until then, may I offer you a short one minute excerpt of the performance. Enjoy.